After TRUMP and MELANIA tokens, it seemed that it was difficult to surprise anyone. But then the president of the Central African Republic (CAR), Faustin Archange Touadera, announced the launch of the Central African Republic Meme token with the $CAR ticker. About this national cryptocurrency project, he said wrote February 9 on the X platform (ex-Twitter). Memecoin is positioned more as a «experiment» to raise the country’s image in the international arena and promote economic development.
«Today we are launching $CAR, an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development, and put the Central African Republic on the world stage in a unique way,» said Faustin-Archange Touadera.
The CAR token has the following contract address: 7oBYdEhV4GkXC19ZfgAvXpJWp2Rn9pm1Bx2cVNxFpump.
However, the official CAR account in X was blocked shortly after the launch, which raised many questions about the transparency of the project. This raised the question of whether the CAR president’s page had suddenly been hacked.
In addition, after the official announcement was published, Tuadera posted a video message about the launch of CAR, calling on the public to support the initiative. However, Deepware and Seferbekov detectors analyzed the video and found the possibility that it was a deepfake: Seferbekov detector estimated the probability of a fake at 82%, and Ensemble model – at 60%.
Yokai Ryujin, founder of unrevealed XYZ saidthat the domain of CAR’s official website (car.meme) was registered only three days ago through Namecheap.com, which looks suspicious for a government project.
Nevertheless, the new memecoin instantly attracted the attention of the crypto community. A few hours after the launch, its market capitalization soared to $900 million, but later stabilized at $310 million. As of the morning of February 10, CAR was trading at $0.22. The price on the Raydium platform reached $0.3028 (+196277.88%). GDP of the Central African Republic in general was 11 billion in 2024.
CAR’s success was fueled by the recent trend in political memecoins that began after the TRUMP launch. This coin reached a market capitalization of over $14.5 billion before crashing.
The Central African Republic is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its significant gold and diamond deposits. This is not the first time its government has experimented with cryptocurrencies: in 2022, the CAR became the first African country to recognize bitcoin as an official means of payment.
Traders warn that CAR’s memecoin shows signs of the classic «pump-and-dump» — scheme, when the price rises sharply and then collapses.